Chemists advanced the development of organic photovoltaic cells and discovered a novel technique for studying the nanoscale structure of water on solid surfaces. Physicists found possible variation in the fine-structure constant and accurately measured the atomic mass of nobelium. Astronomers discovered the largest known star and an extrasolar planet close enough to its star to have liquid water. NASA’s planned missions to the Moon were canceled, and a Mars rover became the longest-lasting probe on that planet.

Chemistry

Physical Chemistry

Physical SciencesHeath Group/UCLASeveral advances in imaging techniques reported in 2010 boosted researchers’ abilities to discern molecular-scale details of materials. Ahmed H. Zewail and co-workers at Caltech coupled a procedure for generating three-dimensional electron microscopy images with ultrafast measurement methods. The new time-resolved imaging technique, known as four-dimensional (4-D) electron tomography, provided three-dimensional views of nanometre-scale specimens evolving on the timescale of one femtosecond (10–15 second). Conventional tomography methods could be used to build up three-dimensional representations of an object by integrating a series of two-dimensional projections recorded over a range of viewing angles. These representations could then reveal insights into the object’s geometric and structural properties that could not be derived from flat projections alone. Such tomography methods were limited, however, in that they provided time-averaged pictures of static objects. In contrast, the 4-D method highlighted the dynamics of nanoscale specimens undergoing transient motions and structural changes. The team demonstrated the method by recording tomographic images and videos that depicted a ring-shaped carbon nanotube wiggling and undergoing rhythmic motions in response to sudden heating pulses.

In another study conducted at Caltech, James R. Heath and co-workers devised a way to overcome the difficulty in determining the nanoscale structure of water in contact with solid surfaces at room temperature. The interaction of water with solid surfaces is central to many processes in corrosion and in atmospheric and geologic chemistry. Water typically adheres to surfaces only weakly at room temperature, and its structure is easily perturbed by probes, so researchers generally had to resort to cooling their study samples in order to coax water layers to stay in place while they were being analyzed. Heath’s group found, however, that by humidifying mica and covering it with a layer of graphene (an atom-thick sheet of carbon) at room temperature, they could readily image the structures formed by water trapped beneath the graphene. Using atomic force microscopy, they found that the water formed a single layer of atomically flat plateaus two molecules (0.37 nanometre) thick and that the water had the structure of ice. At higher humidity levels, a second icelike layer formed on top of the first, but subsequent layers had a liquidlike structure.

In another development concerning imaging techniques, Ruslan Temirov and colleagues at the Jülich Research Centre in Germany reported that the attachment of a hydrogen or deuterium molecule to the probe tip of a scanning tunneling microscope could greatly enhance the microscope’s resolution of complex organic molecules. The improvement resulted from hydrogen’s ability to serve as a nanoscale sensor of electronic repulsion in the vicinity of an organic molecule and as a transducer that converts those repulsive forces into variations in the tunneling conductance.

Nuclear Chemistry

The seventh row of the periodic table of the elements was completed in 2010 as a result of a high-energy nuclear synthesis experiment that succeeded in creating a few nuclei of element 117. To produce nuclei of the elusive superheavy element, an international team led by Yury Oganessian of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, fired beams of calcium-48 ions at a target of radioactive berkelium-249 nuclei. In general, such atom-smashing experiments generate an enormous number of energetic particles, including some types that survive only very briefly before disintegrating through α-decay and spontaneous fission. By monitoring the positions and times at which these events occurred and by measuring the products’ kinetic energies, the Dubna team discovered a few series of correlated events that marked the creation and subsequent disintegration of two isotopes of the new element: 293117 and 294117.

As with other heavy-element discoveries since the early 1990s, the findings in the element-117 study placed the theory for a so-called island of stability on ever-firmer footing. That theory refers to the existence of a grouping of heavy-element nuclides predicted to be more stable and longer-lived than nuclides containing lower or higher numbers of neutrons. Some of the nuclides might be stable enough that researchers would be able to probe their reactivities and other chemical properties, which is not possible with other heavy-element nuclides.

Also in 2010 the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry officially approved the name copernicium, with symbol Cn, for element 112. The originally proposed symbol, Cp, was not used because it had previously been used for an alternative name of another element.

Organic Chemistry

A time-honoured principle of organic chemistry that describes an important class of reaction mechanisms may need to be revised. For decades chemistry textbooks taught that bimolecular nucleophilic substitutions, known in chemistry parlance as SN2 reactions, cannot take place at a tertiary carbon centre—that is, a carbon atom bonded to three other carbon atoms. The reasoning behind the principle is that molecular crowding at the site of the tertiary carbon centre blocks the sequence of molecular events that underlies the SN2 mechanism. Furthermore, stable ions containing carbon, such as those formed from tertiary carbon species, facilitate an alternate reaction known as SN1. Mark Mascal, Nema Hafezi, and Michael D. Toney at the University of California, Davis, however, showed that chemistry is not always constrained by that rule. The researchers investigated the reaction of the tertiary alkyl oxonium salt 1,4,7-trimethyloxatriquinane with azide anions (N3–) and concluded that the tertiary carbon centres in that unusual compound succumb to SN2 attack. To support its contention, the team examined the reaction’s dynamics and found them to be consistent with second-order kinetics, as expected for the SN2 reaction mechanism.

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